Living My Life, One Parsec At A Time
by Tallictr
Summary: So...my skin is blue and my eyes are red now. That's certainly an unexpected development. And I'm now a baby, not to mention a Chiss, so there's that to consider as well. Hmm, with all these changes I only really have one thing to regret. That I didn't get to sleep with my hot MILF of a neighbor, not even the once, before I apparently died. Well, at least I'm Force-sensitive.
1. Chapter 1

_Yo, people, what's going on!? :D_

_I'm here with another Star Wars fanfic. Last one didn't generate too much buzz, eh it was a half-hearted attempt at a writing exercise geared towards writing fiction for fandoms I find writing about outside of my comfort zone anyway, so I figure I might have better luck this time._

_Also, is it me or did I use the word writing too much just now?_

_Anyway, l__et me know how you guys feel about it, taking into account that this follows Canon and that I'm not one of those die-hard fans who've read the books. My info comes straight from the fandom wiki page and what I personally remember. So don't hate on me if I get some stuff wrong._

_E__njoy the first chapter and I hope to see you all again if I decide to post a second chapter. Though, that happening depends on how you guys feel. Which means I won't know if you don't leave a review._

_Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read RE: Trailer Trash on royalroad .com It's just updated and I'm so excited!_

_Bye~._

It was an awful experience, being given a second chance life. First of all, I died. Which _sucked _all kinds of dick because I thoroughly enjoyed living my old life. I was healthy, I lived in a nice apartment, I won the lottery in my early twenties and invested it the way my sister told me to, so I didn't have much of anything to worry about financially for the rest of my life, and I was _this _close to getting into my neighbor's pants.

Keep in mind that I was a sixty-four-year-old man, though I tried real hard to not look like it, and she was in her thirties, a mom, and married to some asshole, pretty boy, hedge fund manager. Do you understand just how much work goes into successfully seducing a woman half your age against those kinds of odds!?

_So! Fucking! Much! _

Secondly, being reborn means being _reborn._ As in I spent the first few months of my second life developing into a baby until I was birthed by my new mother. And don't even get me started on how badly I freaked out when I saw that the doctor and the two people who I assumed were my parents had blue skin, black hair, and red eyes.

And lastly, I had to adjust to the fact that I wasn't human anymore. I was now from a race of people known as the Chiss. Which, because the Universe seems to love paying special attention to me, is the name of a race I recognize from Star Wars. Think Admiral Thrawn.

Here, I'm called Crost'edoawi'hlossurm. A mouthful, I know. But it did grow on me once people started addressing me as such for years on end without any sign of stopping. It made being greeted and greeting people, who had similarly long names, nearly unbearable at times.

It surprised me how quickly Chiss children grow up. There didn't seem to be a time where my people, turns out it was easier to adjust to my new life than I initially though it would be, weren't studying or learning how to better our civilization. Essentially, there was no such thing as childhood for a Chiss.

Another surprising development for me was learning that I was, in fact, a force sensitive. Channeling the Force was the first thing I tried when I realized where I was. Nothing happened, and it would be an understatement to say I was severely depressed about losing my Human self _and _not being able to use the Force. So, I sort of gave up on life for a while before bouncing back at the fact that I could be fucking awesome, considering that regular people like Han Solo could leave as large a mark in galactic history as he did, even without it…even though I _really_, _really _wanted it.

But lo and behold, my Force sensitivity eventually did make an appearance. It just didn't take until I was older for reasons beyond my understanding.

I was four and I wanted a book from one of the top shelves of our library. I couldn't reach it and my parents wouldn't give me the time of day to do it for me, I still don't know why they'd had me if they weren't going to spend any of their time raising or caring for me, so I got frustrated. That turned into anger and _that _led me to my first real moment of feeling hatred towards them for all they _hadn't _done for me. If this was how all families were with their children, it's no wonder they all act the way they do.

With the hate came the sudden burst of power. Needless to say, we'd needed a new bookcase after that because ours was thrown clear across the room and ended up a pile of broken wood as a result. Honestly, that scared the shit out of me because that could have easily been someone I had no real issues with; enemies beware my ability to unintentionally inflict injury upon you!

The possibility of being in a heated argument with, say, a girlfriend and then accidentally throwing her clear across the room and into a boneless heap on the ground sent a chills down my spine. So, after that, there were no more temptations from the Dark Side that could grab my attention, for anything more than a simple acknowledgement of its alluring presence in the back of my mind, because fuck hurting someone willing to tolerate my existence enough to sleep with me.

It also helped that I knew exactly what the Dark Side would do to a person who fell prey to it.

Not so surprising was that I wasn't sent to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant like I thought I'd be once I was discovered to be Force sensitive; though I never was since I knew the consequences and hid my talents as best I could. It was why had to begin training _myself_ in the ways of the Force, because some anti-social stay-at-homes can't handle someone with the ability to connect with the Force.

Force-sensitivity was viewed by almost all Chiss as one of _the_ _most_ shameful things a Chiss could have. Something that I was lucky I wouldn't have had to find discover as they were taking me away, as it was a topic that went unspoken until it was right in one's face.

The Force was fascinating to me; and still is. Using it, as far as I could tell, was the process of sensing its presence both around you and _inside _you, allowing yourself to open up to that presence as a part of you, and using that part of yourself to perform feats otherwise impossible.

Granted, that's an oversimplification of what it truly means to use the Force. But you can't really understand what I'm talking about anyway until you've felt it for yourself.

It took me six years of constant practice before I was able to do the things I'd seen in the movies and television shows. I got the feeling that any idiot with Midi-chlorians could just pick things up and throw them at their targets. So, not wanting to be 'any idiot', I worked hard on learning to control the speed and precision at which I used nearby objects.

There was an old, abandoned, ship junkyard a mile from where I lived. There I would practice lifting starship parts up as quickly as I could and then put them back down as slowly as I could; then doing the reverse. When that wasn't enough of a challenge for me anymore, I moved onto manipulating more than just one object at a time and trying to get better at catching, or dodging, anything coming towards me.

The better I got at all of those skills, the less likely I'd ever be truly disarmed; or even unarmed since just about everything can be a weapon if you try hard enough.

It soon became clear that my ability to use the Force was sort of like a muscle that needed to be stretched and worked until it was strong enough to exert the level of strength I wanted. And the more I used it, the more powerful it grew.

In addition to the 'physical' aspect of the Force, every night I made sure to take the time to lose myself in the 'spiritual' aspect of the Force. I would sit on my bed with my legs crossed and relax myself until the Force took hold of me. And when it did, it showed me a great many things that I needed to be reminded of.

Dates, locations, names, and so many other important things I'd forgotten over the years came flooding back. There was even some information in there that I didn't think I knew in the first place. Quite frankly, I found myself falling in love with the Force all over again. So many possibilities and I'd barely scratched the surface.

What I learned through several sessions of meditation was that I was born forty-one years before the destruction of the first Death Star, and that meant I'd be twenty when the Clone Wars broke out. It also meant that I had less than twenty years to start making some serious changes. Although, I do remember not being able to so much as _think_ about any of that for a week because of the panic attacks I kept having.

And that was mainly because the end of the Clone Wars was the end of the Jedi Order as the galaxy knew it and the rise of the Empire run by a seemingly all-powerful Sith Lord and all that was stopping _that_ from happening, if stopping it was the right move to make because I honestly didn't know if it was at the time, was me.

So, that was a fun little thing I got to deal with. I was hoping that maybe I was born after all that 'how we got here' bullshit that happened before and during the Clone Wars and that I could just make some changes here and there to the rest of the series.

You know, everything that the Star Wars: Battlefront II campaign, the Star Wars: Rebels series, the Star Wars Rogue One and Solo stories, and Episodes IV, V, and VI, _maybe_ even the final trilogy if I lived long enough would have covered.

But nope. I got saddled with the whole damn franchise, which meant being essentially clueless since I had no idea how the Clone Wars were supposed to go outside of whatever the Force decides to send my way. Which, so far as today, has only been what I already knew somewhere in the back of my mind and events in the immediate future. As far as a year and as soon as several days.

In fact, my first real Force vision had been of Ashoka Tano being accepted into the Order. Though, I had no idea at the time whether or not it was something had just happened, already happened, or was going to happen soon.

I also get a second set of panic attacks because I _also _suddenly became very aware of the possibility that I might fuck things up even worse than they originally were.

So, yeah. _Fun times all around for ol' Crost'edoawi'hlossurm_.

Those years of relative peace and feverish training in my life lasted until I was ten years old. The moment I turned ten, my parents came for me in the night. They slapped a cadet uniform on me and threw me into the waiting arms of our people's equivalent of a military.

Funnily enough, that was the closest thing to a hug I'd had in a decade.

And I say it's the _equivalent_ of a military because it's really more of a government sponsored expansionism group that focuses on pushing our borders outwards and increasing our total available resources. We have trillions of hungry Chiss mouths to feed and we're trying not to deplete our limited resources in order to feed them, so it's something the government takes rather seriously.

Taken to the nearest base and told by the woman who came for us that it would be my home for the next seven years, I suck up any bitter feelings I have about being forced into this position. Conscription didn't, and doesn't, sit well with me on any level because fuck going to fight somebody else's war, even if it _is _a war on hunger, or for somebody else's cause involuntarily. _But_ I was also told that we would be put through seven years of intense physical conditioning and education programs, depending on what specific career path is chosen, designed for maximum efficiency.

And while I had been practicing my Force abilities, I'd also spent those last six years doing absolutely nothing with my body; except maybe the time I spent dodging fast-moving flying and falling objects. And while I wasn't out of shape, because Chiss are somehow naturally lean and on the slightly more muscular side of things, but I definitely wouldn't be running a marathon anytime soon.

If I wasn't a Chiss, I'd call bullshit on how an entire people can be naturally in shape while everybody else needed to spend their entire lives exercising and eating right to look that way. But, as it was, I _am _a Chiss, so I haven't and certainly never will complain about that.

Turns out, it wasn't so bad being at the base/academy. We chose seven courses, from a long list numbering in the hundreds, and studied only those courses for the seven years we were there. It was assumed that all basic knowledge was learned prior to arrival. Despite their lack of any and all affection, my parents did at the very least pay for a tutor to come and teach everything I was supposed to know.

Which made it much harder than I ever wanted it to be to practice using the Force in my junkyard training area.

I decided to study areas that I felt would be crucial to surviving the deathtrap that was this entire goddamn galaxy. I chose to focus on learning hand-to-hand combat, starship mechanics, piloting, the three Chiss languages, close quarters combat, marksmanship, and droid mechanics. If I didn't have intimate knowledge of each of these subjects, I'd probably be dead within a week of leaving the planet.

While everything else was self-explanatory in how vital they were towards my continued existence, I feel it important that I explain why I chose to learn the three Chiss languages instead of something else like, say, first aid or something else potentially lifesaving.

It's because language barriers were, and still are, very obstructive annoyances if you didn't have the right tools with you to deal with them. Thousands of planets and species come with what I've always imagined to be _hundreds of millions _of languages with even more dialects and accents.

Now, Cheunh was the Chiss' 'official' language and, thankfully, it was weirdly the exact same language I spoke in my previous life; English. Everyone who spoke, no matter what part of the known territories they lived in, spoke Cheunh. Thing is, there were also languages known as trade languages; though not every Chiss knew how to speak them as not every Chiss were traders. And the Chiss that spoke them, used either one or both of the two of them.

Sy Bisti was spoken amongst the races of the Unknown Regions of the galaxy and was reluctantly learned by the Chiss to avoid becoming any closer to said races. Confusingly enough, it worked for the most part as being able to tell our neighbors to kindly fuck off in one of their most common languages was helpful in getting them to do so.

Minnisiat, however, was one of several languages that the Chiss _used_ to speak until a very long time ago when they all decided to speak one common tongue. _This _was the language I was really looking to learn, as it was one of the common languages that of the Outer Rim.

How it spread from Csilla to the Outer Rim, or possibly vice versa, I have no idea. But, once I learned it, I could use that to find someone who could teach me Galactic Standard Basic. It would take a while and I'd hate every step of the way, but it would only serve to help me in the long run.

But I needed something else to keep myself occupied besides training and studying. I felt as though I was too out of touch with all of the major players and I didn't want to wait another four years to get into contact with one of them. Too many missed opportunities to learn and grow under the guidance of someone so much more well-versed in the Force than I was.

So, one night about three years into my seven year program, I did something about it. As usual with my nightly meditation that I disguised as _actual _meditation, I sat on my bed and began clearing my mind. But this time, rather than allowing myself to get lost within the Force, I cleared my mind of everything except a single thought:

'I want to speak to someone from the Jedi Council. _Anyone_.' And the Force responded by doing exactly as I had asked.

Of course, I never expected it would work on my first try. And even if it did, I wasn't sure of how well my three years of Minnisiat would hold up against someone who might only speak Basic or whatever other languages are out there. But surprise, surprise when only a few minutes later my mind slips away for the briefest of moments and comes back, just as fast, to find that I'm now standing in an unfamiliar room.

The window was set to give only a shaded view of the outside world, and it didn't have much more than the bare necessities. The only real item of value being an auto-scrolling data pad sitting on the table.

A deep, serene voice addresses me. "Hello, young one." Or at least, that's what I figured when no one else says anything for the next few seconds. I slowly turned around and saw, I swear on my life, Samuel L. Jackson sitting right behind me with a stern but curious look on his face. That threw me for the biggest fucking loop of all time, even now it numbers near the top of my top ten 'What The Fuck' moments, and it must have showed on my face because I could see his expression soften a bit when my eyes met his.

Then it clicked. In the movies, he played Mace Windu so of course he'd look like that. That was something I hadn't considered before. I wondered how Yoda would look…hopefully more realistic than either his puppet or his CGI. Especially more than his CGI.

Back to the conversation with Windu, "…hello." I tried my best to keep calm, even a bit cautious as the situation demanded of a thirteen year old boy in a presumably unknown place nowhere close to home. Still, he's an intimidating person, and I say that as someone with a good thirty or so years on the man. "Where am I? I was in my bed meditating…and now I'm here."

His brows furrowed for a moment, as he contemplated my words, before understanding dawned on him as to what was going on. "It appears that the Force has brought us together, young one. Are you somewhere within the Temple or has your Master taken you away for a mission?"

It took a second for my brain to process that I was understanding everything he was saying, Meaning either the Force translated his words, which is boss as fuck, or through sheer dumb luck he happened to speak Minnisiat or one of the only other languages I knew at the time! Though, he addressed me initially so there was a smaller chance of that. Unless, of course, he knew from how I looked that I was a Chiss and therefore assumed that Minnisiat was the better way to go since there was a higher chance of him being understood.

But whatever the reason was, we understood each other. Which was great.

And, oh, he thought I was a Padawan at the Temple with the whole Jedi starter pack/kit and kaboodle. "The Temple? My Master? I don't have a Master." I hum, as if remembering something. "Wait, are you one of those Jedi I've been taught about?" I smile gently. "Then…is this the Jedi Temple on Coruscant?" While we preferred to be left alone in general, we tended to keep tabs on the rest of the galaxy. Meaning we knew where all the major civilizations and organizations resided, in case we ever needed to use that to our advantage. Paranoid and close to sounding like something aggressive might follow, had I not known that there really wasn't much Chiss interest in expanding anywhere into or near the Outer Rim's borders, but still helpful. So, I just sit back and let the knowledge accumulate.

Now his brows furrow for a different reason.

"No Master? Who are you? _Where _are you?" I wasn't sure if that was an angry tone or not, but the softened expression from earlier had managed to get lost in caution. Either way, it was best to be careful with my answer. "I am Crost'edoawi'hlossurm; you may call me Wade if my formal name is too long for you And I believe I am …somewhere far away from where you are, I think. Who are you?" If he's surprised by either my secretive answer or my full name, he doesn't show it. But I can feel him feeling better with the idea of an unknown element being far enough away to feel secure. Even if said element is a child.

Wade was something I came up with after agonizing for several days over what I would call myself when not in Chiss space. It was an anagram of sorts, but not really, since I didn't have the kind of name that could be broken down into another. Thrawn came from Mit**th**'**raw**'**n**uruodo, which meant I'd be 'Stedoawih' if I had done the same thing he did.

But that was just an awful name to be stuck with, so I looked for alternative from the different sections of my name broken up. Wade was the best choice, it coming from Crost'**ed**o**aw**i'hlossurm. The other possibilities were Sorus, Sol, Solus, Archie, Oda, Ed, Odea, and Wadi. All anagrams. They weren't bad names, just names that I wouldn't personally enjoy being called.

Plus, with names like Ben in circulation, Wade shouldn't be too out of the ordinary despite being a name from Earth.

"I am Mace Windu. A Jedi Master." I nod my head and say 'oh~' in an impressed and slightly awed tone. "You say you don't have a Master, but who is it that has been teaching you? I find it doubtful that you have managed to reach out to me without any training or guidance. Especially in such a manner." Apparently, appearing as a manifestation that could be seen was something high-level. Who fucking knew? Not me, that's who.

I smiled at him, hoping this would impress him. Because who want to impress a Jedi Master no matter what your age? "I've had to teach _myself_ to use the Force—that's what my parents told me it was called—because there's no one around here to give me any guidance. On my world," Technically our people were spread across several worlds. "there are few of us who can use it. And those who can and haven't been persecuted for it are far and few between, so I've had to become as proficient as I am now through my own efforts and self-training."

He hadn't said anything back after that, and his face was unreadable, but I thought things were going well and I wondered what other ways I could impress him if that hadn't been enough. I remembered that choking people through long distances was a thing in one of the movies; I'm pretty sure, anyways. I doubted that I could pull it off as well as whoever it was, either the Emperor or Darth Vader, did…but maybe it wouldn't be as hard as I thought.

Not the choking part. The using the Force from lightyears away part. If I could see my target with my own eyes like to feet in front of me, it'd be sort of like doing it while I was really there. Besides, the Force encompasses the galaxy. There's no reason it _shouldn't _at least a little.

Pretending to think that he was making that face because he didn't believe me, I made to prove him wrong. "You don't believe me? Here, let me just…show…you…what…I can…_do_…"

I hold out my hand towards the data pad sitting on the table. Focusing my all of my attention on it, I will it to lift into the air and come to me. It moves, practically invisible to the naked eye, but it _moves_; I could feel it. The success is a boost to my confidence and, for a moment, I'm convinced I could do more than just make it shake a bit. Even more so when it began rattling around violently after about the longest minute of my life. Mace said _something _in the background, but I was too wrapped up in my success and my concentration to pay him anymore mind.

I can feel it. Nearly entirely off the table, I feel confident enough in my concentration to try and talk. Just to give an update to a worried man. "I think I can almost-"

I began to speak and then I was suddenly back on my bed in the base, feeling the worst I've ever felt in both of my lives. My stomach lurches forward and my dinner is no longer in my stomach but on the sheets of my bed. Shivering with cold sweat, and barely able to stay upright, I tumble out of my bunk , the middle bunk, and onto the floor. I realize then and there that he was probably trying to tell me that what I was attempting to do was something unsafe for someone with no formal training.

I also remembered that in some cases, one in particular where the person even had a lifetime of training, it can be quite lethal.

There were voices beginning to surround me. Most of them young, but two of them stuck out that I recognized as our resident medic and our drill sergeant. But I lost consciousness before I could think about any more than that.

Still, though. Was I fucking awesome or what?


	2. Chapter 2

_I'm back!_

_But there's not much to say, so l__et's make this short!_

_Enjoy the read! Leave a review as they inspire me to write more! I hope to see you all in the next chapter! I love you all!_

_Bye~_

The incident, which had thankfully not led to any sort of long-term degrading labels from any of the other academy students as I had not only thrown up all over my bed and my clothes but had also proceeded to pass out on top of a poor young girl who just so happened to be talking to the boy sleeping beneath my bunk, marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

Using the Force to contact Mace on a regular basis was a game changer. I'd decided not to call him Master Windu because one: I wasn't in the Jedi Order or anywhere within their reaching distance and two: I was technically older than him and had no problems acting like it. I gained a wealth of information regarding the Force _and _a direct line to one of the most powerful and influential Jedi in the Order. Until he gets killed by an angsty Anakin Skywalker, that is. And even then the Order gets fucked over to the point of near-extinction.

And it was all thanks to the Jedi High Council's wonderful decision on how, exactly, to handle me; not that they really had much of an alternative since the alternative was leaving me to my own devices. Of which I just might find myself getting seduced by the Dark Side, and that they could not allow. I had simply too much potential. At least, that's what I gleaned from the explanation Mace gave me about the whole thing.

Combined with the fact that I could reach out to someone on Coruscant from the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, I decided to let it slip since I figured being from there would keep them from trying to constantly nag about picking me up to take me to the temple, _and _could influence something as much as I did that data pad with only self-training to rely on from half a galaxy away? Yeah, there was no way they weren't going to try and instill their teachings on me.

Which I would gladly accept, as the more I could get my head wrapped around the true nature of the Force, the better I would be at wielding it.

Besides, I showed an interest, a _genuine _interest, in learning the ways of the Jedi. Which, to them, must have been a relief. As I imagine that they would be trying their damnedest to keep an eye on me as much as possible should I ever make it into Republic space, had I shown any sign of rejecting what they stood for. And there was no way I was setting myself up for that bullshit.

It was honestly terrifying for me to try and connect to him again after the first time had ended so poorly. But with some peaceful meditation, some controlled breathing, and a short period where I buried my face in my pillow and happily gave up on being a badass wielder of the Force in favor of sleeping through the rest of my life, I connected with him as gently as I could get the Force to allow. Rushing things had landed me in the infirmary, where the term 'bedside manner' was not applicable in any sense of the term. By the end of my trip there, I was very much looking forward to the day when I would leave Csilla behind in favor of a world with some emotional and conversational lifeforms. The kind that explain what they're doing to you as they treat you with care, and not ignore you the whole time they're jabbing at you with rather cold medical equipment.

In the end, the reason the physical backlash was so bad had more to do with the fact that I tried to overextend my already limited capabilities beyond the monumental task of appearing before someone who was incredibly far away. And even then, I was only able to pull _that_ off as well as I did because Mace is so well in tune with the Force that he, in essence, picked up the slack of my attempt to reach out to him.

So, after four simultaneously blissful and exhausting years of being under the guidance of both Mace _and_ my instructors at the academy, all of whom relentlessly attacked me with lessons and lectures and tasks, I went from being a somewhat talented novice in all things to being fairly decent in my academy studies and near the level of a late-stage padawan learner. Quite impressive, according to Mace, for someone who was taking distance learning to the extreme.

I reached new heights with my control over the Force, not to be mistaken with me actually controlling the Force itself as that was nothing I'd ever dream of trying in fear of becoming like Darth Plagueis and accidentally creating the next Anakin Skywalker turned Darth Vader, that I would never have been able to reach on my own.

At the very least, nothing I would've reached as soon as I did on my own. Though it'd have taken me far too many years what with the upcoming war to consider.

As someone who'd spent his entire life, one of them anyway, reading Marvel comics and watching the various movies and television shows, having a sort of Spidey Sense brought me indescribable joy. Even more when I take the time to appreciate how much better at predicting incoming danger the Force actually is.

Though, it almost seemed like I was growing at a rate unlike anything that should happen naturally when it came to the spiritual side of things. Mace certainly thought so. Apparently, it's not natural to be able to connect so easily to the Force through simple meditation without years of guidance. Years that I definitely didn't have when I first connected to it. So, I've always wondered if that meant my reincarnation was something orchestrated by the Force itself, or if it was just happenstance that came with a bonus perk. Does coming from another universe, or the same universe just a long time from now in a galaxy far, far away, have any significant effect? Perhaps I'm just lucky enough to have a high Midi-Chlorians count, with the two of them being entirely separate occurrences.

Even now I feel like sighing at this train of thought, as it only leads to more questions I doubt I'll ever get answers for.

Truthfully, the possibilities were intoxicating. With what I had at my disposal, anything I wanted was mine if I was willing to do what it took to get it. The lack of any actual Jedi oversight did nothing to help in reigning in my impulses. It's around that time it sunk in, though I'd certainly thought about it often in my first life, that it's no wonder why so many people in and with power become arrogant and tyrannical.

When you feel capable of doing anything you want, you start to ignore the idea that, hey, maybe you shouldn't _even if _you could. I almost did too.

Almost.

Once the allotted seven years were finally up, I, along with the rest of my class, was given a choice. Stay and join the cause we'd been generally prepared for or leave to find a career elsewhere; which wouldn't be difficult since we were all skilled in various fields. For the most part, the others chose to stay and contribute towards securing a stable future for our people. Admirable, but not the path for me.

Thirteen people chose to leave for other careers; mostly those that wanted to go into politics; presumably there were one or two among them who had decided to follow another of the thirteen throughout _their _political career. And of those thirteen, only _I_ chose to live a life that didn't service the Chiss people in some way. I didn't inform anyone of my choice, which I _was_ obligated to do at the end of my period of education, and simply left before they came for my answer.

Well, it was really more of an _escape_ since I'd had to sneak pass building security and then the guards at the gate to get outside of the facility. Unfortunately, I'd had to miss the graduation party. I'd miss out on free booze and the sight of one girl in our class who was a hysterical drunk, but it was a small price to pay for a lifetime of freedom.

After making it off the property, I spent the next two days making my way towards the closest spaceport. The ports on Csilla were very large but had several hundred miles between each one. I'd had to Jedi Mind Trick, like, eight different people to get there; something that would never not be fun to do.

What was less fun were the many 'integrity' and 'moral obligation' lectures I'd had to endure in order to be taught how to use it effectively enough to work on most people. Not even Jedi Masters could make it on _everyone_.

Some people just had a higher level of willpower than others. Also, the Force had a part to play in it as well. Seeing as it was infinitely harder to Jedi Mind Trick another Force-sensitive.

I didn't bother going back to my parents for a goodbye. Instead, I sent them a message. Nothing too long or fanciful, but enough to tell them how disappointed I felt about the lack of closeness between us, why I was leaving the Chiss territories, and that I wasn't sure if I'd ever see them again. It felt weird to leave things with them like that, but how else could it have been left after the way things played out.

Such a shame it couldn't have been different. I'd have loved to have a second set of parents for a second chance at a decent home life. The first set weren't much better than these people.

Starships weren't hard to steal if you knew who to steal from and how to avoid being tracked after you've stolen them. I needed a ship with all of the necessities for long-term, deep-space travel. That meant a hyperdrive, escape pods, advanced primary and secondary navigational systems, long range scanners, and everything else a ship of that time's highest caliber had. And I would get all of these things from the spaceport's government owned shipyard.

It was incredibly difficult to steal ships from the government, as one might imagine.

Each one was built with several failsafe measures designed to allow government agents to retrieve the stolen ship, which was filled to the brim with our people's unique technology, if it was still in Chiss space. If it wasn't, the ship was destroyed. It was so no one could reverse engineer a way back to Csilla using its guidance systems.

Luckily, I hadn't messed around too much those seven years and knew everything I needed to know when the time came. I snuck passed all the guards and maintenance droids, some of which I had to either take down or disassemble; nothing that would do any permanent damage beyond a headache and the droid equivalent of a headache.

It didn't take all that long for me to disable the tracker, defuse the explosive and non-explosive failsafe measures, memorize and erase the travel logs saved up until that point, and then high-tail it to whichever planet I was going to. Following up on that, I had no choice but to let the Force's guiding presence take care of the coordinates because who the hell knew where anything was?

Not me, that was for sure. The Chiss not being all that interested in anything outside of themselves, cemented by the fact that they offered no star charts or maps of any kind outside of those that detailed Chiss space, didn't help me at all.

Well, officially that's how it was. But I'm certain the highest echelons of the government had accurate and frequently updated star charts just in case there came a day when it was vital to have them.

Like an invasion from one of the many peoples and races we have shied away from having contact with over the years.

In the cockpit, I closed my eyes for that very first time, as I would come to do so every time I took the helm, and let the Force adjust the controls and set my destination. Admittedly, it was nerve-racking. It _excited_ me because that had been something I hadn't attempted before that moment, and I was eager to see how it played out. But it also _terrified_ me because I had no idea where I was about to be taken.

I took off from the station and sped away from the planet, jumping into hyperspace as soon as I'd left behind Csilla's gravitational pull. Gravity wells were something that anyone with half a brain knew not to play around with. If your ship got caught in a gravity well while it was in hyperspace or attempting to enter hyperspace, the consequences were immediate, messy, and even deadly depending on how strong the well's pull is.

Specifically, being scattered across the stars in a part of the ship that hadn't lost all its oxygen or still had functioning life support was the best you could hope for.

While in hyperspace, I took to gazing at the stars being stretched across space-time. It was mesmerizing, and almost hypnotic, to say the least. In my piloting classes, we were told to never look at hyperspace for long periods of time, as madness often plagued those who did. No one had any solid reasons as to why, but I wouldn't question it. So, I got a good five-minute look before leaving to explore the rest of the ship.

The ship itself was diamond shaped, the front half distinguishingly elongated, and had two blue streaks running vertically across the steely-grey hull on both the top and bottom. Walking from one end of the ship to the other I'd say it was forty meters wide and maybe sixty meters in length; give or take a couple of meters. I'd need to take a closer look at it once I landed on a planet where it was daytime, and I wasn't sneaking past security guards to steal it.

There was also no name written on it anywhere, or maybe there was and I just didn't see it, so I would probably have to give it one myself. And it didn't even have to be original! I could name the thing just about anything I wanted, and I did, and no one would bat an eye, and they didn't.

I was thinking…The Pillar of Autumn. Was it a name I stole from a game I liked? Yes, it was. Did I care? No, not particularly. It sounded cool, no one here would recognize it, and that was good enough for me.

And even if they did, fuck the haters!

Spacious. That's how I would have described the ship. Especially the storage facilities that had been packed to the brim with supplies; it seemed I was lucky enough steal a ship that was about to finish a supply run for one of the new colonies. If the manifest was correct, there was enough food, water, fuel, and spare parts to keep me going for several months without needing to stop anywhere. Even longer if I was smart enough to ration everything properly and keep away from trouble.

Beyond the sizeable storage capacity, the Autumn had enough living space for eight people; four rooms with two beds each. At that point, however, my plans for companionship didn't go beyond an astromech, a protocol droid, and the slave I was thinking of buying. She was going to be a woman because, well, I found and find it easier to place my trust in a woman rather than another man.

Also, I had, have, and always will have every intention of partaking in crazy amounts of sex with as many women as possible while in this galaxy. Whoever I found in the Outer Rim as a suitable travelling companion would be the first of many; hopefully.

Why would I waste time doing something like this when there was a decades long conflict in the immediate future? Because I wasn't about to waste the good looks, high levels of endurance and stamina, and the natural charm this body gave me like some of the characters I knew from my other world might. That's right, I read Fanfiction. Being rich and having no responsibilities got unexpectedly boring and I needed a long list of hobbies to kill time.

The harsh reality of this galaxy was that slavery exists, and there was nothing substantial that someone like me could do about it. Not to say that there wasn't _anything _I could do about it; I'm sure I could have done loads of things about it. I told and tell myself all the time that saving those who I would eventually take into my personal inner circle was my way of doing _something _rather than nothing while also prioritizing the survival of all the non-assholes of the galaxy I found myself trying to protect.

But the fact remained that I simply didn't have the motivation to do much more than that. It would take time, effort, and money that I didn't have or feel willing to expend on something that hadn't had much at all to do with preparing the galaxy for the rise of the Empire that was about to take place in five years' time.

The Separatists and the Republic would be going to war in two years. And in two years I would have needed to gather as many pre-war supplies that I could get my hands on. War-time restrictions on several goods and services would no doubt be limited in both quality and quantity. Plus, I needed to get my hands on several hundreds of millions of credits if I wanted to do any of this either before or after the war starts.

Luckily, seven years' worth of plotting left me with a multitude of methods to do so. All of which led to be being quite the rich bitch…

Yeah~ I'm never saying that again. But! The sentiment still stands!

Essentially, I came up with several different ways of successfully using the Jedi Mind Trick on drug dealers, slave traffickers, and crime lords to give me their shit. Being morally flexible had never steered me wrong before and I was counting on it to once again work its ethically questionable magic in my time of need.

I didn't have much time for the actual acquisition of these much-needed resources, I estimated having only eleven, out of my rough estimate of twenty-four, months' worth of ship/food/money gathering time. Because beyond that, there were still so many important things to take care of.

Clearing Atollon's enormous cave systems of those creepy looking spiders, finding engineers who would be able to fix up and refit stolen ships no questions asked, earning hundreds of millions of credits through less than legal means, saving Shmi from the Tusken Raiders and preventing Anakin's complete fall to the Dark Side if I could, sabotaging Order 66 if at all possible, trying my damnedest to sleep my way into a position of wealth and power, and many more tasks that I used to get headaches and the promise of hard times just thinking about.

After checking out my ship as much as I could from the inside, I went back to the cockpit and, facing away from the mesmerizing sight of hyperspace, meditated for the remainder of my journey. Despite how skillful I was at using the Force now, relative to the level I was at before, I was still no true match for masters like Windu, Yoda, Plo Koon, and Shaak Ti. They were among the largest powerhouses of the Jedi Order.

There was always room for improvement. A fact that both humbled me and inspired me to soar to even greater heights. The Force was one of those things that didn't have a limit as to how in tune with it and empowered by it one could be. Yoda was a testament to that fact. Nine hundred years and still so much left he hadn't had the opportunity to learn.

I would eventually find my ship leaving hyperspace and revealing to me my first Force guided destination in the Outer Rim.

Ryloth.

The planet where beautiful Twi'lek women with French accents came from.

True even to this day, I _love _the Force!


End file.
